The images
in the following program
are highly sensitive
and may be
as disturbing to viewers
as they were to us.
However, we have to
show the truth
about cruelty to animals,
praying that you will
help to stop it.

On this week’s edition of
Stop Animal Cruelty
we’ll find out about
the barbarous killing of
our wonderful, noble
feathered friend, the duck.
Ducks are
highly intelligent,
have rich emotional
and social lives and
communicate through
vocalizations
called quacking.
Ducks recognize
one another through
their distinctive quacks,
and variations in the tone
of a quack communicate
different emotional states.

A female duck
sits on her eggs for up to
28 days until they hatch.
New hatchlings are able
to swim just a few hours
after birth, and can travel
considerable distances
to find water.
Ducks also form close
bonds with other ducks
and with animals
of other species.
In one case a male duck
in Sweden became
the foster father of
five chicks after
becoming enamored
of their hen mother.

In addition, ducks show
altruism and cooperation,
often flying in groups
to protect and assist
one another
during long journeys.
In one instance
Dr. Arthur Peterson of
Florida, USA found
a male duck
aiding his blind partner
by giving her vocal cues
to help her find her way
around, thus acting as
a “seeing-eye duck.”

However, despite their
compassionate natures,
tens of millions of ducks
are slaughtered
in cold blood by
so-called “sport hunters”
each year.
In the US alone,
the animal welfare group
In Defense of Animals
estimates 14 million ducks
are murdered
by shooters annually.
Besides being decimated
by hunters,
duck populations are
facing tremendous pressure
from their habitats
being substantially
reduced in size due to
climate change,
land development,
and drought.

Some birds can fly
12,000 kilometers
without stopping.
It's amazing; they can
navigate, they can fly day
and they can fly night
so you are dealing with
intelligent species.
All different species
have their own sort of
intelligence to suit
their environment and
it's amazing
what birds can do, but
of course when they come
here to Victoria,
there's a good chance
that they will get shot
either legally or illegally
by duck shooters.

Laurie Levy is
the Campaign Director of
the Coalition Against
Duck Shooting,
a non-profit group
in Australia that
for over 25 years has
wholeheartedly strived to
protect these beautiful,
sensitive beings.

We started the campaign
in 1986 to bring an end
to the terrible injustice of
guys going out there with
semi-automatic shotguns
and blowing away
Australia's beautiful
native waterbirds.
And in those days
Victoria was the capital
of Australia as far as
duck shooting went;
we had something like
95-100,000 duck shooters
in this one state alone, and
I believe the only way
we could have an impact
there was to get
a lot of media coverage.

And over the last 20 years
the numbers of
duck shooters in Victoria
have declined from 95 to
100,000 down to 20,000
and that's due to
public opinion and also
in that time three other
states in Australia,
Western Australia,
New South Wales and
Queensland
have already banned
the recreational shooting
of native waterbirds.
A Morgan Research poll
conducted in October
2007 showed that 87%
of Victorians want the
recreational shooting of
native waterbirds banned

Duck shooting is
a brutal practice with the
sole objective of killing,
maiming, injuring and
capturing as many ducks
as possible.
Most hunters use
shotguns to kill the birds,
and some use
semi-automatic weapons
if allowed by law.

A shotgun sprays
hundreds of burning,
piercing pellets
at one time and increases
the chances of injuring
or killing a duck or any
other bird in the vicinity.
Typically when a flock of
ducks takes to the air,
a hunter will fire multiple
shots at the flock,
causing hundreds of
red-hot pellets to
spray into the birds’
fragile bodies and severely
injure or kill them.

Those birds suffer
horrific injuries.
If you can imagine being
blasted with a shotgun,
duck shooters fire about
200 pellets at them
so anything from two
or three pellets to 200
can hit a bird.
Now, if two or three
pellets hit, pellets can be
lodged next to a nerve,
or a bone, can shatter
a bone so birds suffer
shocking injuries.
They get shot through
the eye; you see them
with their bills
blown away.
They’re shot in the body,
they have legs blown off,
and it’s really a barbaric
type of activity.

Depending on the size
of the pellet, a duck
will typically die when
three to eight pellets
directly hit him or her;
however, many of
the other birds caught
in the radius of a shotgun
blast may also be struck
by the lethal pellets,
causing
tremendously painful and
often crippling injuries.
The mutilated birds may
be able to continue flying
in dire agony
but will eventually die
from their wounds
in a slow, painful death.

For every hundred
ducks shot,
150 are injured and
meet this gruesome fate.
Yet other maimed ducks,
unable to fly,
fall to the ground and
suffer further harm
upon impact.
The hunters then go
in search of
the downed animals and
once they’re found,
viciously shoot
the helpless birds again
or savagely twist and
break their necks.

Approximately 66% of
ducks downed are not
dead upon retrieval and
those that are not located,
face a slow, anguished
death from bleeding,
starvation, trauma,
disease and exposure
to the elements.
According to research
done in North America,
20 to 40% of
ducks and geese
hit by shotgun pellets,
regardless if they die
immediately or
are wounded, are never
retrieved by shooters.

Due to the indiscriminate
nature of shotgun blasts
and the utter callousness
of hunters,
many non-targeted
and protected birds
are inadvertently killed
in bird hunting.
Furthermore, thousands
of shotgun pellets, which
are sometimes made of
highly toxic lead,
litter the wilderness and
are accidently ingested
by unsuspecting wildlife,
who die from
lead poisoning after weeks
of unbearable suffering.

Western Australia banned
the recreational shooting
of native waterbirds
in 1990;
that was followed in 1995
by New South Wales,
and Queensland then
followed 10 years later
in 2005 and they did it
mainly because of the
shocking cruelty involved
in the shooting of
native waterbirds.
Shooters use shotguns,
which are scatter guns
and they only have
a range of about 50 meters.
They fire at birds that
are out of range and
they wound them and
at least 25% of birds that
are shot are wounded
and those birds will
fly away and
die a slow death.

The Coalition Against
Duck Shooting
actively protects birds
from shooters and
treats those ducks and
other waterfowl
wounded by pellets.

Our rescue team this year
will comprise of about
200 members of the public
who will go out
to the wetlands.
Our role is to move birds
away from the shooters
before the opening time
and bring in
any wounded birds.

We have mobile
veterinary clinics
up on the wetlands and
also to bring out any
illegally shot, protected
or threatened species
that are shot.
But in the early days,
in the 1980's and
early 1990's we would
go to Lake Bolac
in central Victoria and
that wetland was about
15 kilometers by
about eight kilometers
in those days and
you would get 10-15,000
duck shooters
on one wetland.

And it was frightening
out there, birds were
falling out of the sky,
you had duck shooters
in those days, using
semi-automatic weapons
so it was quite frightening
but we used to bring out
three or 400 wounded birds
that were treated in our
mobile veterinary clinics
on that one weekend alone.

What drives waterfowl
hunters to murder ducks
and other birds?
We asked Mr. Levy
for his perspective.

I see duck shooters being
similar to arsonists.
Arsonists can’t help
themselves when they
start fires, even though
they probably know that
those fires are going to
kill people possibly,
it can kill wildlife
and of course destroy
the vegetation and
the environment.
Duck shooters also
can’t help themselves and
that’s why they illegally
took water last year
from the Latrobe River,
they wanted birds to
shoot and they were
prepared to do anything
to get those birds
on their property to shoot.

So native waterbirds
have always had
a really tough time
and I don’t necessarily
blame the shooters,
because they can’t help
themselves.
But I do blame politicians
that allow it to happen
and politicians with
one stroke of a pen
could put a stop to
that brutality and that
suffering permanently
as three other states
in Australia
have already done.

What should we do if we
discover a duck
or other waterfowl
that has been shot?
What can we do to
prevent them from being
targeted by shooters
in the first place?
Mr. Levy has
the following advice.

Take the bird to a vet,
or ring the wildlife
department
in whatever country
the bird is in because
waterbird numbers
right around the world
are decreasing,
mainly because of
climate change
and it’s going to be a lot
tougher in the future.
So what people could do
is just do what we’ve done,
take people out
to wetlands if
duck shooting is allowed,
wear bright-colored
clothes, stop birds
from being shot, and
have mobile veterinary
clinics on wetlands
to deal with
injured waterbirds.

If we speak out together
against these atrocities,
we can stop them.
We can let others
know about the cruelty
perpetrated by
bird hunters and write to
community leaders and
government officials
to advocate for
an immediate ban on
this abhorrent activity.
By raising awareness and
voicing our disgust about
such practices, we can
ultimately abolish all
forms of animal cruelty.

Laurie Levy,
we truly appreciate what
the Coalition Against
Duck Shooting is doing
in the state of Victoria
to safeguard ducks and
other waterfowl
from shooters.
May your ultimate goal
of a hunting ban in
Victoria soon be realized,
with the result of
several hundred thousand
precious duck lives
being saved each year.

For more information
on the Coalition Against
Duck Shooting,
please visit
www.Duck.org.au
or connect with
the Coalition at
www.Facebook.com

Thank you for
your presence today on
Stop Animal Cruelty.
May humanity soon learn
to love all beings and live
in peace and harmony.